Cruising along and feeling positive about everything that I’m learning (coming in reading/understanding music and theory helps)- but I’m feeling like my right hand is lagging behind (I blame my life-long habit of being left handed).
I feel like I’m struggling to chug as fast and as “locked in” as I’d like to. I feel like I can’t quite get my fingers to “reset” after alternating, or they might run ahead or behind of the tempo, as if my fingers aren’t used to the weight of each string or haven’t found the least amount of resistance to pluck before resetting for the next set of notes.
Any tips- or is this a case of just putting in the 10,000 measures of eighth notes?
I‘m also left-handed. I practice every day for over a year now and chugging with the right hand feels now a lot more natural as at the beginning, but it’s still not on the same level as with the left hand. I think if I started over, I’ll go with a left-handed bass.
A left-handed Instrument might also be better against GASing😀
Good one to practice that is the first part of Dean Town. If you can keep up with Dart’s “chugging” for as long as he plays it then you’re in good shape.
Start slow. Work your way up. It’s not just about the speed but the stamina.
You’ll need a proper form for the right hand the fastest way to achieve that is to do it really slow. Commit that to the muscles memory and then the autopilot will take care of the rest.
You’ll notice most time you’d struggle on a piece it’s usually the right hand that need attention not the left.
When i first started playing bass, i spent a lot of time working on my right hand technique and my muting because i’d watched a lot of bass videos and read a lot of forum posts and i knew many of the issues that people had to go back and relearn later.
The only way you get better is to practice good technique and put in the hours working at it. According to Yousician, I’ve played about 2.5 million notes in just over 400 hours and i still find ways to improve my right hand technique
Im in the same boat - left handed but learnt on a right handed bass.
Unfortunately, the practice thing is true
But you should hopefully get to a point where youre playing along to something and youll stop as youre struggling with something else thats difficult and youll start to practice that loads and loads and then eventually you’ll stop, and have a bit of a review with yourself and realise that youve already learnt the speed and the stamina and that you’re now concentrating on some other technique.
I find this out by recording loads and loads of sessions and then go back and listen to some really early recordings and you’ll see how far you’ve come on. If you then attempt those earlier recordings again, you should hopefully find that you can absolutely whizz through them now.
Me too but play righty. I was playing a couple of months and tied a lefty. Couldn’t do it. I think there’s more to it than just being right or left handed. Kind of like with board sports (surfing/snowboarding/wakeboarding), most people seem to be left foot forward riders regardless of whether or not they are right or left handed. I think guitar may be the same way. I think most people pluck with their right hand more naturally.
I’m not sure either direction is more “natural”. When you start the instrument you have to learn everything, so either way requires learning new skills.
For myself, it seems like fretting requires more dexterity than plucking, so it makes sense to be using my dominant hand for that.
But I also had years of piano and cello before I started the bass, so maybe I’m not a good judge of this.
